The arrival of new communication technologies such as third generation mobile technologies will allow existing services to be significantly enhanced and will also allow the introduction of new advanced service. Examples of new services are video conferencing, multi-participant gaming, and instant messaging. Consumers will be expected to pay extra for these enhanced and new services, as compared to what they pay for the currently available services. However, the nature of many of the services will mean that new charging mechanisms will be needed if consumers are not to be dissuaded by the high costs.
In the case of multi-participant services, some form of cost sharing may be appropriate. A simple mechanism for sharing the costs of a long distance telephone call between originating and terminating subscribers is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,381,467. This relies upon the local exchange of the terminating subscriber (or the terminating inter exchange carrier switch) detecting that call sharing is activated for calls received from a given originating subscriber, and an interaction between the terminating subscriber and the local exchange to accept or reject the cost sharing option. There is a limited possibility for the terminating subscriber to specify the cost sharing formula, but there is no possibility for the originating subscriber to influence the final formula.